An Open Access Review Journal Encouraging Critical Engagement with the Continuing Process of Inventing the Middle Ages

July 25, 2014

Montoya: Medievalist Enlightenment



Alicia C. Montoya. Medievalist Enlightenment: From Charles Perrault to Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2013. 256pp.

Review by: Kathryn E. Fredericks (frederic@geneseo.edu)

The subject of Medievalist Enlightenment: From Charles Perrault to Jean-Jacques Rousseau by Alicia C. Montoya is medieval literature, and this book is the second volume in the series Medievalism.  Volume I of the series is entitled Anglo-Saxon Culture and the Modern Imagination, edited by David Clarke and Nicholas Perkins.

In Medievalist Enlightenment: From Charles Perrault to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Alicia C. Montoya provides an in-depth study of the period 1680-1750.  She explains that in this time frame "portions of the secular, vernacular literature of the Middle Ages – the romances, troubadour lyric and other narrative works we consider today as the age's literary classics – came to the fore: the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, or the period spanning late classicism through early Enlightenment" (2).  Reiterating the fact that the presence of medieval literature in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries has already been documented, Montoya states that "the decades from the 1680s through to the 1750s have almost invariably been overlooked or addressed only in passing" (2).  She presents here, therefore, "the first book-length study addressing the literary medievalism of the decades from the 1680s to the 1750s" (2), and in this book, she sets out her intention specifically to "make the argument that modernity arose in part out of literary medievalism" (4).  In the abstract to her book, Montoya says that this 'literary medievalism' "played a vital role in the construction of the French Enlightenment; Starting with the Quarrel of the Ancients and Moderns, it influenced movements leading to the Romantic rediscovery of the Middle Ages, and helped to shape new literary genres, from the epistolary novel to the fairy tale and opera."  Concerning the overall purpose of the book, Montoya writes: "From the re-evaluation of the medieval thus emerged not only the seeds of a new poetics, but also the central questions that preoccupied Enlightenment thinkers from Montesquieu to Rousseau", and "[a]t the centre of these debates was the notion of historical progress."  Montoya shows in this work that a careful examination of how this particular period of history considered the Middle Ages provides us with a better understanding of conceptions of modernity.


Medievalist Enlightenment is divided into three main parts, and is comprised of an Introduction, six chapters, and a Conclusion.  The first two chapters are found in 'Part I: Conceptualizing the Medieval', which discusses "late seventeenth-century conceptualizations of the medieval" (8) to "the reflections on the medieval of the philosophes and their critics of the 1750s" (8).  Montoya examines the following three authors in great detail: Charles Perrault, Jean Chapelain, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.


In 'Chapter 1: A Sense of the Past: Ancients, Moderns, and the Medieval', Montoya presents a discussion of Perrault's Parallèle des Anciens et des Modernes.  She chooses Perrault's Parallèle "because this was the most complete and systematic text to appear during the initial phase of the Quarrel addressing the issues it raised (25).  Chronologically speaking, the "issues," she later explains, are two opposing ideas: "If, on the one hand, the medieval was moving closer to the present day, on the other hand modernity was encroaching on the medieval, for there was not always a sense, in Perrault's Parallèle, of a strict separation between the two" (32).  Montoya provides a particular example in Perrault's work: "The last volume of the Parallèle, which argued for the technical superiority of the Moderns over classical Antiquity, was perhaps the most surprising, for time and again Perrault resorted, for his examples, to the medieval period" (32-33).  Ideas regarding considerations of the relationship between the past and the present, and the question of where to place the Middle Ages in history, or how to label it as its own historical classification, are of central importance in this opening chapter.  

'Chapter 2: The Medievalist Rhetorics of Enlightenment' explores considerations of medieval literature specifically by Jean Chapelain and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.  Chapelain's dialogue La lecture des vieux romans and Rousseau's Discours sur les sciences et les arts are directly compared.  Montoya points out that "at first sight, the two texts may appear to convey diametrically opposed viewpoints.  While Rousseau ostensibly condemned the medieval, Chapelain's dialogue on the contrary argued for a rehabilitation of medieval romans, on moral rather than stylistic grounds" (47-48).  Montoya dedicates this chapter to showing how the two texts, though different in methodology, can both be viewed as favorable considerations of medieval literature.  Montoya concludes that "Chapelain and Rousseau drew on humanist precedents in order to propose a vision in which modernity could be perceived not as the result of a process of historical progress, but, rather, as moral and political degeneration" (68).  Montoya writes that the "[a]ges previously viewed as dark" (68) – as well as "barbaric" (68) – "were now viewed in terms of moral exemplarity" (68) during the time of the philosophes, the Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, or, the Age of Light.     


Chapters three, four, and five are found in 'Part II: Reimagining the Medieval'.  This part treats "concrete examples of literary medievalism" (8).  In 'Chapter 3: Survivals: Reading the Medieval Roman at the Dawn of the Enlightenment', Montoya opens by explaining that here she "will explore how, during the early period covering the 1680s to the 1700s, the roman or chivalric romance (roman de chevalerie) was read by contemporary readers, and how these readings related to other conceptions of the medieval" (71).  She takes as her prime example the letters of Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, marquise de Sévigné and "relates Sévigné's remarks on medieval romans to other traces of early Enlightenment readers and readings of medieval texts, and beyond these, to the critical debate on the significance of the medieval past for literary modernity" (72).  In this chapter, Montoya primarily discusses the existence of romans de chevalerie in eighteenth-century libraries, which ones were being read and by whom.  Montoya points out a "more interesting question" (83) as to "how [these texts] were actually read by contemporary readers" (83).  Here she mentions specifically "correspondences, journals, and other autobiographical works" (83), and takes the letters of Madame de Sévigné as a powerful example of "opening literature to new social groups" (95) – to a female audience and to different classes of society, for example.

In 'Chapter 4: Continuities: The Medieval as Performance', Montoya shows how two genres, the opera and the fairy tale, "invite us to think of the medieval not so much as text, but as performance: not primarily as content, but as a kind of musical mode" (12).  This argument is particularly strong with reference to the opera, where Montoya provides several detailed examples within the context of theatricality and performativity (117).  While the "performing authorship" (128) discussion of the fairy tales is indeed an interesting and novel approach, other considerations of the later influence of fairy tales could also be explored further, such as the evolution and development of the conte to the conte philosophique genre so characteristic of the Enlightenment and of the literature of the eighteenth century, including different European authors, and especially Voltaire.    

In the final section of Part II, 'Chapter 5: Reconfigurations: Medievalism and Desire, Between Eros and Agape' Montoya focuses primarily on the letters of Madame de Sévigné and the fiction of Jean-Jacques Rousseau.  Here, she "[explores] Sévigné's and Rousseau's rewriting of the Abélard and Héloïse myth" (12).  The purpose of this is to show "that these authors deployed medieval references in an attempt to secularize older notions of Christian agape, seeking to attain a new, distinctly modern reconciliation between secular and divine varieties of love" (12).  Specific topics discussed include "Earthly and Divine Love" (147), "The Role of the Heroide" (150), "Desire as an Instrument of Religious Realization" (154), " Sévigné: The Mother as Lover" (157), "Motherhood and Agape" (160), "Rousseau's Nouvelle Héloïse and the Héloïsian-Ovidian Model" (165), and "New Ideals of Marriage" (173).


The third and final part of Montoya's text is entitled 'Studying the Medieval' and includes the sixth chapter and the Conclusion.  Part III "argues that the professionalization of medieval studies coincided with broader philosophical shifts marking the beginning of modernity – and defining, too, the conceptual parameters within which we continue to speak of the medieval today" (8).  In 'Chapter 6: The Invention of Medieval Studies', Montoya "focuses on the ideological contest between academic medievalists, and aristocratic scholar-amateurs" (12).  Montoya begins her final chapter by stating that the "new, academic medievalism had its institutional basis at the Académie royale des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres" (185), from which emerged "an ideological struggle between two competing models of medievalism" (186), as Montoya suggests, "an older, aristocratic model of amateur engagement with the medieval, and a newer, bourgeois model of professional historiography" (186).  The chapter focuses on the varying considerations of medieval scholarship by three authors: Jean-Baptiste La Curne de Sainte-Palaye, Anne-Claude-Philippe, comte de Caylus, and perhaps most importantly, as Montoya notes, Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu, in whose works "in the actual practice and development of medieval studies, the two competing traditions came together" (219).

Montoya ends Medievalist Enlightenment with a section called 'Medievalism as an Alternative Modernity' (221), where she concludes that "[u]nderstanding [literary medievalism from the 1680s to the 1750s] is crucial not only to understanding the parameters within which we have ourselves come to conceive of the medieval, but also to understanding the epistemological debates on which [Enlightenment's] modernity itself was built" (224).  This work presents an organized, thoughtful, and detailed analysis of the presence and considerations of medieval literature in the early Enlightenment period.  The selections discussed here highlight pertinent entries from this volume, which is an excellent contribution to scholarship on both medieval and Enlightenment studies, and a valuable resource for scholars of each period.   


Kathryn E. Fredericks
State University of New York at Geneseo

Stromberg, dir: Maleficent

 
Maleficent. Dir. Robert Stromberg. Disney, released May 30, 2014, in theaters. 135 mins.

Reviewed by: Elan Justice Pavlinich (justice7@mail.usf.edu)

Visually enchanting, comically elegant, and mildly violent, Maleficent is a feminist film that places women harmoniously in nature, against the impotent hubris of the patriarchy. Maleficent is Robert Stromberg’s directorial debut, and though it is written by Linda Woolverton, Charles Perrault, who published “Le belle au bois dormant” as part of his 1697 Histoires ou contes du temps passé, is credited too. Of course, the Disney Animated Classic Sleeping Beauty follows Perrault’s tale, but it is this 1959 cartoon that provides the visual foundation upon which much of Angelina Jolie’s characterization of the dark fairy is based.

Indicating an acquaintance with this textual history, the narrator begins the tale with the compelling challenge that she will “tell an old story anew and see how well you know it.” Now, audiences are aware that Maleficent is a modern adaptation of a familiar story from the villain’s point of view, and though it lacks the majesty of a typical Disney fairy tale introduction, right away the audience is presented with the problem of textual authority. Who is in charge here? Perrault? Sleeping Beauty? Or the contemporary cinema that is presently staking its claim to an oral tradition that challenges our cultural memory of the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale?

The cross-cultural multitemporal setting is at once familiar and ambiguous, referring the audience to a time long ago that eludes any coherent spatiotemporal location. The tale implies an early medieval temporal setting based on the contrast between the fairy realm and the kingdom of humans, yet the architecture and costume design suggests postconquest Britain, which is evinced by the Anglo-Norman influence on the castle and costumes out of medieval romance that indicate a dominant French presence in an English court.[1]

Young Maleficent, played by Isobelle Molloy, first appears as a happy fairy in earth tones, at peace with nature and a healer who promotes wellness in the Moors, a land which is inhabited by all mythical creatures, in contrast to the architectural vista of the unnamed kingdom of humans. Maleficent meets Stefan, a boy who had been warned never to venture into the monstrous territory of the Moors. During this encounter we learn that fairies cannot touch iron without being burned, and so Stefan tosses his iron ring so that he can be closer to Maleficent. Their love, however, cannot withstand Stefan’s ambition as he is drawn to power in the kingdom of humans. His people fear the Moors, and their ruler, King Henry, promises that the one who slays Maleficent will advance to the throne. Relying on his intimacy with the powerful fairy, Stefan lures her into a meeting, drugs her, cuts off her wings, and delivers them to King Henry to signify that she has been vanquished. Based on these deceits Stefan becomes king, and his firstborn is Aurora.

On the day of Aurora’s christening the kingdom gathers to bestow gifts upon the child. Maleficent intrudes upon the festivities dressed in black, and Angelina Jolie delivers the iconic curse with magnificent wickedness, proclaiming amidst roiling green smoke that the princess will prick her finger on the spindle of a spinning wheel and fall into a death-like sleep before her sixteenth birthday, and that she may only be revived by true love’s kiss. As a precaution, King Stefan rids the kingdom of all spinning wheels and sends Aurora to be raised in the countryside by three inept fairies, to return to her home only after her sixteenth birthday.

Over the course of Aurora’s youth, it is the vigilant Maleficent who protects her from the shadows, who are determined to see her curse fulfilled. To the audience familiar with medieval romance, while Maleficent appears to be monomaniacal, her curse serves as the seed for her personal epiphany concerning love’s triumph over hatred. Nearly sixteen years later, Aurora, now played by Elle Fanning, is made aware of her guardian, and a bond is cultivated between the two.

Still, the curse takes hold and Aurora is compelled to return to her kingdom. The curse conveys her through hidden passages and a company of women who are washing white sheets until she finds the room of discarded and dismembered spinning wheels. She pricks her finger, falls asleep, and the quest for her true love is begun. The logical remedy is a kiss from the dashing Prince Phillip, who anticlimactically fails to awaken her. It is Maleficent, Aurora’s fairy godmother, whose kiss restores the princess.

Her father however, King Stefan, has fallen prey to his own paranoia and sets a trap to murder the fairy once and for all. While Maleficent struggles to save herself, Aurora discovers her godmother’s wings locked away in another secret chamber. She frees the flapping members, which seek out the body to which they belong, and upon union Maleficent is restored to her full power so that she can defend herself. She does not vanquish King Stefan, however; rather it is his megalomania that leads him to his own death.

In the end, Maleficent finds happiness and is returned to harmony in the Moors, and Aurora is named queen of both realms. All creatures, human and mythical, are happy to uphold her as the rightful ruler.

According to Entertainment Weekly, Maleficent is a recycled story with very little substance and an ill-refined plot that conflicts too much with its predecessor, Sleeping Beauty.[2] This myopic assessment does not consider Maleficent’s elegant simplicity. The temporal aspects of the fairy tale have been collapsed. Now, instead of an entire kingdom slumbering for years, Maleficent presents Aurora, alone, sleeping for hours. Minimal character development and sparse dialogue indicate a refined narrative that relies on visual expression and the audience’s presuppositions. It is this very elegance that bespeaks a quiet complexity; one that is fully appreciated by considering Maleficent within the textual history of the Sleeping Beauty narrative and by recognition of the visual argument that promotes feminine empowerment. The fairy tale tradition has maintained gender dichotomies through such narratives, like the foundational Disney Animated Classic Sleeping Beauty, that foster tropes and archetypes, subconsciously enforcing notions of feminine weakness and servitude or monstrous corruption that requires rescue and order by means of masculine power and control. Maleficent is not only self-conscious of its relation to a literary history of androcentric narratives; it extricates itself by announcing its own textual authority as a representation of feminine empowerment in contrast to the impotence of masculine claims to power.

The first glimpse of this stunning cultural critique occurs in the teaser trailer for Maleficent. In accordance with other Disney previews that immediately signify their connection to the iconic studio, the teaser trailer opens on the Disney kingdom at twilight, but then the shot suddenly veers off in the exact opposite direction to show the peaks of a wild and untamed other, the Moors.[3] Upon first viewing it would seem that the preview is announcing that audiences will be taken into the dark mirror-realm that opposes the perfection of the Disney kingdom, but in fact, as we learn the politics of Maleficent’s diegesis, the Disney kingdom is self-consciously equated with patriarchy. The Disney kingdom is opposite Maleficent’s Moors, precisely in the same place as King Stefan’s castle, an industrialized realm of masculine authority built on treachery, where women serve to beget heirs or they work underground to keep the kingdom clean. Signifying the Disney kingdom in place of Stefan’s castle in the preview suggests a Disney film that defies the Disney tradition. Maleficent, following on the heels of Frozen (perhaps too closely), also promotes a practical notion of true love; one that relinquishes the old fairy tale tradition that commodifies women and bolsters masculine authority. The Maleficent teaser trailer makes fascinating use of space, for if we, the audience, are accustomed to the spectacle of the Disney kingdom, it would suggest that the Disney kingdom as patriarchy is constructed in such a way that it is constantly vigilant of its other, and that our point of reference is the feminist kingdom, whence we gaze.

The teaser trailer also plays on the audience’s androcentric expectations, in that Maleficent is publicized as a wicked witch, rather than betrayed fairy. Audiences are drawn to the character because she is portrayed as monstrous, yet Maleficent constructs a visual argument that privileges women rather than reducing them to sexualized or horrific spectacles. Once again, the teaser trailer is dark, with Maleficent shrouded in shadows as Aurora asks her to show herself and to not be afraid. Delivering a response that releases shivers, the mysterious figure says to Aurora that upon seeing her, “you’ll be afraid,” as she steps forward to reveal Maleficent in the flesh to audiences for the first time.[4] The promotional material for Maleficent conveys what Barbara Creed defines as the monstrous-feminine, in that it “emphasizes the importance of gender in the construction of her monstrosity.”[5] Not only does cultural memory identify her as evil, but also Maleficent is still being depicted as the archenemy in the Disney videogame series Kingdom Hearts, and ‘Maleficent’ derives from the Latin maleficus, referring to an enchanter with the connotation of evil. While it would be naïve to limit Angelina Jolie’s Hollywood persona to a sex symbol alone, one cannot neglect her physical appearance and previous roles, which contribute to the cultural memory of her identity and the talents she brings to the Maleficent character. Jolie’s sexuality coupled with the dark nature of the previews, which boast blatant adjectives such as ‘wicked,’ insinuate a monstrous-feminine persona.

Conversely, Maleficent defies notions of monstrosity through a series of reversals that culminate in her sentimental epiphany and the union of the feminine Moors and the masculine kingdom under the harmonious rule of the beloved Aurora. In spite of the marketing techniques, the film undermines Maleficent’s monstrosity, using it instead for comical effect; her character development defies the horror genre the promotions promise to audiences, while maintaining the lessons advanced by feminist scholars like Creed: 
 
            The representation of the monstrous-feminine in patriarchal signifying practices
            has a number of consequences for psychoanalytically based theories of sexual
            difference. On the one hand, those images which define woman as monstrous in
            relation to her reproductive functions work to reinforce the phallocentric notion
            that female sexuality is abject. On the other hand, the notion of the monstrous-
            feminine challenges the view that femininity, by definition, constitutes passivity.
            Furthermore, the phantasy of the castrating mother undermines Freud’s theories
            that woman terrifies because she is castrated and that it is the father who alone
            represents the agent of castration within the family.[6]
 
Stefan, the embodiment of patriarchal values, is both fearful of castration and the castrator (of both Maleficent and himself). Female sexuality is represented as abject through the various dichotomies that are built upon a substratum of sexual difference, and yet the image of feminine sexuality permeates the film, not as monstrous, but a sensual source of strength. Maleficent is anything but passive; her role throughout the film exposes the impotence of the patriarchy by asserting her own authority over male characters, and her ultimate victory reclaims the women, such as Aurora’s mother and the washerwomen, who are silenced under baseless masculine power.

Femininity is conveyed through a series of images that assert not only autonomy, but also authority, in spite of the phallocentric regime. Maleficent’s lips constantly contrast with the color scheme of the film’s mise-en-scène; even the opening sequences of her childhood the earth tones of the Moors, her costume, and complexion clash in order to emphasize her lips. Her femininity commands attention. In fact, much of Maleficent’s appearance is vaguely vaginal, including her bright blood-red lips that seem to rupture the otherwise color-coordinated visual aspects, as well as the large and looming wings that are stolen from her by an untrue lover, and the horns that adorn her head, featuring tripartite curvatures that are reminiscent of labia. Maleficent’s appearance vividly portrays the feminine cross described by Luce Irigaray: 
 
            Two sets of lips that, moreover, cross over each other like the arms of the cross,
            the prototype of the crossroads between. The mouth lips and the genital lips do
            not point in the same direction. In some way they point in the direction opposite
            from the one you would expect, with the “lower” ones forming the vertical.[7]
 
There is no explicit reference to her sexuality—this is, after all, a Disney film—but her femininity is boldly emblazoned, dominating every mise-en-scène, to emphasize the power of her femininity in opposition to the patriarchal forces that seek to squelch her autonomy. In fact, some critics have recognized that the scene in which Stefan drugs Maleficent, cuts off her wings, and leaves her alone in the dark, suggests rape.[8] Her wings, commodified and cloistered by the patriarchy, are rendered tokens of Stefan’s masculinity. They are perverted to signify his patriarchal authority; an authority that exists only by relating itself to, and by the subjugation of an other.

Ultimately, the impotence of the patriarchy is revealed, and (unsettlingly) every masculine character is made subject to feminine forces. First, King Henry believes the land of the Moors to be a place of evil, and so he sends his troops to conquer it and to slay its protector, Maleficent. King Henry dies a pitiful death in his luxurious bed soon after his attempt at conquest. King Stefan is deprived of enjoying the company of his own daughter, Aurora, and even his wife, whom he neglects on her deathbed. Finally, after having been defeated by Maleficent and left to live out his life and maintain his throne, in a fit of anger he attempts once more to destroy her and accidentally hurls himself from a tower of the castle. Fittingly, the patriarch dies due the dangerous heights of the patriarchal structure, and the wide-angle shot of his armor-clad corpse with canted legs against the flagstones, looking small and vulnerable, visually conveys the emptiness of masculine avarice.

While King Henry and Stefan are motivated by greed, other masculine characters, who are not morally corrupt, are nevertheless rendered submissive to feminine power, namely Diaval and Prince Phillip. Diaval was once a raven, trapped by peasants and pitied by Maleficent; he was transformed into a man, and thus a servant to the mistress to whom he owes his life. Although he acts as advisor to Maleficent, he lacks control over his own body, because she alters his appearance to suit her needs, even violating his will by transforming him into a wolf in order to terrify soldiers. And Prince Phillip, the courtly lover, is also proven impotent by the narrative. Ultimately, his kiss fails to awaken the sleeping beauty, constituting the film’s reexamination of true love’s kiss. But the image of Prince Phillip under Maleficent’s sway, is suggestive of his own lack of power, and perhaps a hint at his true sexuality. Consider that, in order to manipulate people, Maleficent renders them unconscious and lifts them into the air by means of magic; so Aurora, levitated by Maleficent, rolls backwards gently, and floats supine as if slumbering. Prince Phillip, however, assumes a less dignified posture upon levitating. Instead of appearing to be at peace, his face is cast downward and his hind is slightly more elevated than his back, suggesting a masculine posture of submission. He is entirely unconscious as Maleficent traverses the thorny iron barricade that keeps them from accessing Aurora, and it is the three fairies, Flittle (Lesley Manville), Knotgrass (Imelda Staunton), and Thistletwit (Juno Temple), who deliver him to the cursed princess. Women in Maleficent defy danger; feminine forces facilitate masculine powers.

In the end, Aurora is crowned the queen who unites the natural and mythical realm with the kingdom of humans under one rule. But this is not the story “we” know. In spite of the triumph of feminine authority, contemporary audiences are currently living within the patriarchy and we are aware of the controversial effects that humans have on the environment. The magic of the Moors that appears to be synonymous with nature and feminine energy, ultimately, have not triumphed. Regardless of whether Queen Aurora and Maleficent lived happily ever after, we know that eventually these powers have succumbed to the patriarchy. The irreconcilable conclusion of Maleficent to its Sleeping Beauty predecessor raises our consciousness of the textual history of this particular fairy tale. Maleficent does not need to conform to the androcentric narrative upon which it is based, because the tension between Maleficent and the literary and cultural tradition whence it is derived incites the audience to wonder how patriarchal authority ever came to dominate the narrative. Of course, the newest generation of Disney audiences may not recognize themes of rape and contentions of the gender binary, but the Disney fairy tales are evolving to promote autonomy and practical notions of love, because a good fairy tale ought to grow up with its audience.

Elan Justice Pavlinich
University of South Florida

___________________________
[1] Ardis Butterfield, “National Histories” Cultural Reformations: Medieval and Renaissance in
Literary History. Ed. Brian Cummings and James Simpson (New York: Oxford UP, 2010), pp. 33-55.
[2] Keith Staskiewicz, "Maleficent," Entertainment Weekly, June 12, 2014, accessed July 7, 2014,
[3] "Maleficent Teaser Trailer," Maleficent: Official Website, accessed July 7, 2014, http://movies.disney.com/maleficent/video.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Barbara Creed, The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis (New York: Routledge, 1993), p. 3.
[6] Ibid., p. 151.
[7] Luce Irigaray, An Ethics of Sexual Difference. Trans. Carolyn Burke and Gillian C. Gill. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1993) p. 18.
[8] Hayley Krischer, "The Maleficent Rape Scene That We Need to Talk About,” The Huffington Post, June 6, 2014, accessed July 7, 2014, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/hayley-krischer/the-maleficent-rape-scene_b_5445974.html.

July 17, 2014

Vaccaro, ed.: The Body in Tolkien's Legendarium


Vaccaro, Christopher, ed. The Body in Tolkien's Legendarium: Essays on Middle-earth Corporeality. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2013. 200pp.

Reviewed by Leigh Smith (LSmith@po-box.esu.edu)

Tolkien’s view of the body is a delicate issue for a medievalist. We who see him as a colleague are suspicious of readings that appear to evince a too-modern fascination with the material. On the other hand, we must admit that many of the conundrums with which all Tolkienists struggle are related to physicality. Where do little orcs come from? Does Sauron always have a body? Does Frodo actually “fade,” and if so, how? What order of being is Tom Bombadil? No one who has read Tolkien seriously can believe he did not think of these questions. Every year, more of his previously-unpublished notes testify to his obsessive attention to detail. Therefore, if we find his treatment of physicality confusing or paradoxical, we must try to explain it. This is the purpose of The Body in Tolkien’s Legendarium, a varied “collection of essays on middle-earth corporeality” (its subtitle), and its editor, Christopher Vaccaro, is well aware of the difficulty. His fine introduction places the major conundrums in their contexts—medieval heroic literature, Catholic theology, World War I—and summarizes the major attempts of critics to use postmodern theory to illuminate Tolkien’s view of the physical. The essays vary in quality, but all will contribute on some level to a reader’s understanding of Tolkien’s work and worldview, and several point to areas where further research is needed.

The Body in Tolkien’s Legendarium is divided into four parts: “The Transformation of the Body,” “The Body and the Spirit,” “The Discursive Body,” and “The Body and the Source Material.” Most of the essays focus on The Lord of the Rings, but some concern (primarily or in comparison to LOTR) The Hobbit, The Silmarillion, and The History of Middle-Earth. Not surprisingly, two essays focus on Frodo’s body as a site of transformation and struggle. Others focus on female bodies, monstrous bodies, and the physical component of the Ringwraiths and Sauron.

“Part I: The Transformation of the Body” includes the two essays on Frodo’s body. First, Verlyn Flieger argues convincingly that the physical changes in Frodo act as visible signifiers of his “changing relationship to himself, to the ‘real’ world around him, and to the quasi-metaphoric, quasi-psychological world of the Ring” (12). Calling attention to his growing (post-Weathertop) ability to perceive both darkness and light, Flieger addresses an important paradox about the way Frodo changes in the course of his journey: he grows and diminishes. Flieger concludes that he does not become, as Gandalf once hoped, “like a glass filled with clear light,” but that Saruman is right to say he has “grown”: his greatness is made possible by his knowledge of the darkness and weakness within him.

However, Anna Smol comes to a slightly different conclusion. Arguing that “Frodo’s body is the territory on which he battles to maintain his physical and psychological integrity” (39), Smol concludes that Frodo becomes that glass filled with light, though his “faded” condition leaves room for darkness as well. This essay includes an interesting discussion of the “uncanny” and the “abject” as they relate to the horrors of the war zone, and Smol usefully compares Frodo and Gollum in terms of abjection and the transformation it implies. She overstates a little Gollum’s loss of identity: it is not quite true that he “cannot even speak of himself with the first-person pronoun” (48). He does so on several occasions, e.g. “I don’t want to come back. I can’t find it. I am tired” (222). However, the larger point about the dissolving of boundaries and the loss of physical and psychological integrity is well-taken.

Between these two discussions is Yvette Kisor’s excellent essay on another kind of paradox: the “necessity of embodiment created by the Ring exists simultaneously with the Ring’s propensity to rob the wearer of visible bodily form” (20). The Ringwraiths and Sauron seem not to be quite corporeal, and the Ring has the short-term effect of invisibility and the long-term effect of “fading.” Yet, as Kisor reminds us, Sauron and his servants use physical means to kill, torture, and dominate corporeal beings. Furthermore, the Ringwraiths have to ride horses (or other beasts) and can be killed with forged weapons, and Sauron not only inhabits a fortress but can wear a ring. Kisor suggests a logical resolution to this paradox via the “twilight” world where not only dark shadows such as Ringwraiths but also Light Elves and perhaps Gandalf himself walk. Thus, what seems to be incorporeality is actually corporeality “in another dimension where sensory experience and bodily manifestation work differently” (28).

“Part II: The Body and the Spirit” pairs two essays that address Tolkien’s presentation of the body (hröa) and soul (fëa). First, Matthew Dickerson demonstrates the relationship between them as it applies to physical health, environmental responsibility, and warfare. The opening section demonstrating that Tolkien was “a devout Catholic” and “not a materialist” (68) is probably not needed, as this fact is widely recognized. However, the larger section on the balance between hröa and fëa needed for good health of all kinds is illuminating. As Eowyn’s spirit needs to heal along with her body before she can recover from the Battle of Pelennor Fields, the Shire must be cured of Sharkey’s domination before it can become healthy and fertile again. Dickerson sees war as necessary (in Tolkien) for Pauline and Miltonic reasons: free beings must choose a side. Thus, spiritual health, demonstrated by “the choosing of good” (76) will require physical fighting for God against Satan.

Next, Jolanta Komornicka takes on the troubling issue of whether orcs have souls and free will and are therefore redeemable. Komornicka makes use of Tolkien’s notes and letters as well as The Silmarillion and LOTR, revealing that Tolkien was as troubled as we are by the nature of orcs. He changed his mind repeatedly on their origin (tortured elves, degraded men, or both?) and never completely settled on how their bodily reproduction would work. He implies that they would breed like anything else, but we see no orc-women or orc-children. As Komornicka points out, they have blood but no bloodlines, societies but no families (90-91). Ultimately, she makes a provocative but well-reasoned argument that orcs are (at least theoretically) redeemable, as men and elves are corruptible.

“Part III: The Discursive Body” contains two essays that consider Tolkien’s uses of physical description to represent abstractions. In the first, Robin Anne Reid presents a stylistic analysis of Tolkien’s descriptions of Goldberry, Arwen, Galadriel, Eowyn, and Shelob. She details “how often the female character was the subject of the clauses in sections focusing on her” (102), as well as how often this subject was represented by name (or pronoun), clothes, or body parts. She reports how often the nouns, adjectives, and processes associated with each connect to light or dark. Then she reports how often the verbs are “relational,” “mental,” “behavioral,” “material,” “existential,” and even “meteorological.” Concluding with a “queer reading of Eowyn” (100), essentially a reader-response analysis, Reid argues that the “grammar of the text” (107), mostly the action verbs associated with Eowyn, explain her appeal to female readers. Quantifiable data are rare in the study of literature, and Reid has performed an important service by showing how such data may be acquired. However, before scholars can judge what the data mean, more will need to be collected regarding a broader range of characters, including males. I look forward to the results.

Next, Gergely Nagy considers how Sauron is represented in language. This essay invites comparison with Kisor’s essay, and the two disagree on a key point: Nagy sees Sauron in LOTR as “disembodied” (121). However, Nagy is interested in Sauron’s embodiment/disembodiment in connection with his place in the larger mythology. Nagy’s best point is that Sauron wants to control minds and meanings but finds that he can control only bodies (122). Ultimately, Nagy concludes that Sauron’s physical dimension is inseparable from his function in the text. Other characters may represent abstractions, but they also presumably have a physical presence beyond their symbolic value. Sauron, however, is physically represented only in terms of his Ring, his fortress, and his shadow (130). The disembodiment is not necessarily a safe assumption (as Kisor shows), but the larger point about the connection between the physical reality and the symbolic one advances the discussion helpfully.

“Part IV: The Body and the Source Material” is appropriately placed at the end, as it considers the effect of Tolkien’s medieval sources on the issues raised by the earlier sections. The first, by James Williamson, concerns Tolkien’s descriptions of women and therefore invites comparison with Reid, with whom Williamson substantially agrees. In fact, it would be interesting to see whether Reid’s statistical findings support Williamson’s argument, which is that “the female body in The Lord of the Rings is emblematic rather than biological” (134). Using Lúthien as a point of comparison, Williamson examines the physical descriptions of the four major female characters in LOTR (Goldberry, Galadriel, Arwen, and Eowyn). Finding Lúthien emblematic of nature, he finds each LOTR woman to symbolize some aspect of nature: time, fertility, growth, rebirth, etc. Again, to know what this finding reveals, we would have to see it applied to a broader range of characters. Williamson further argues that women in many of Tolkien’s sources are described in emblematic ways. His claim that female characters in Beowulf are “virtually non-existent” (148) is puzzling given the importance of Wealhtheow and Grendel’s mother, but his larger point may well be borne out by future analysis.

Jennifer Culver’s essay deals extensively with Tolkien’s medieval sources, specifically with the motif of gift-giving in Anglo-Saxon culture. Culver argues that people in Tolkien’s legendarium can serve as gifts and that the giving of gifts extends the lord’s influence or “reach” (158). This argument is most persuasive as regards Sauron, whose ring-giving has clearly had the effect Culver describes. It also works well with Galadriel, gift-giver extraordinaire. However, some applications seem a bit forced. For example, while Gollum does hope to receive the Ring when he gives Shelob the “gift” of Frodo and Sam (166), he does not exactly envision a formal exchange. He knows that Shelob does not care about anything beyond her appetite and will throw away his precious with the rest of the inedible parts. Furthermore, self-sacrifices, such as the one Aragorn is willing to make, are standard fare in Anglo-Saxon literature and are often obligations incurred by acceptance of a gift. Whether that makes a body a gift in Tolkien or his source material is a question that would require extensive argument on its own, and Culver does not have room here to do more than assert it. This, then, is another project that could be taken up later.

Concluding this section is Vacarro’s argument about Tolkien’s use of descriptive detail in The Hobbit. This essay may offer the most sensible explanation for Tolkien’s use of abstract, symbolic language: it contributes to a “‘high’ and epic style” (170), whereas physical detail creates a low, naturalistic style and may produce farce as well as realism. While the question of whether Tolkien describes men and women differently is still open (an essay about The Hobbit would not be the place to address it), Vacarro observes that “the physicality of Elrond is withdrawn behind a veil of heroic similes” including “kind as summer” (175), suggesting that genre may be a better predictor than gender. As to source material, Vacarro departs from the usual suspects to consider Tolkien’s creation of his own sources. As he asserted that “the shadow” of The Silmarillion “was deep on the later parts of The Hobbit” (qtd. 162), it seems reasonable to suppose that its higher style as well as characters and motifs found their way into The Hobbit.

Overall, The Body in Tolkien’s Legendarium is a valuable volume, providing illuminating analysis and pointing the way to areas deserving further research. The broad topic of corporeality, as well the related issues of gender and diction, merits attention, and this book contributes much to filling in the gaps.


Leigh Smith
East Stroudsburg University